Sunday, 14 December 2014

Seed heads in their dessicated, skeletal beauty. There is something fey and otherworldly about their silent winter appearance. Today they swayed gently in the icy wind, my hand steadying them for a capture. If you teach yourself to stop and look, there is always something, even in the depths of winter within the hedgerows showing you it's simple charm.

Monday, 8 December 2014

It has been quiet on this blog for a while now. This year I changed jobs, a huge change for the better, and I have nearly finished the first module in a creative writing degree. The writing here on this blog started the move towards story writing for me. The writing here has been so valuable in developing me as a writer, and in me making writing a bigger part of my life.

I've been thinking a lot recently about what makes us happy, what keeps us afloat and without a doubt for me it is making sure I do a range of things that add up to a whole, balanced individual self. I'm sure you get a sense of those things from my posts- they are varied and multiple. Some are robust and healthy like regular walks in the wood and others are off track and fragile as spider's webs. They are like a web, a complex knit together of activities, actions and things that when balanced make a little seam of happy. I'm sort of quite proud of that, that I have begun to realise I can take control of my life. And at the same time I'm desperately sad for those who through illness, sadness and pain remain without these feelings of hope.

Writing plays a huge part in this for me. There is nothing like the small ripples in my brain when a person or a story or a feeling comes together on the page. I've always had this and I've always written, but the course has directed me to actually persevere and I can now write stories, proper stories with real people in them, with a beginning and a middle and an end. They also aren't all heartbreaking, some of them are actually quite hopeful and dare I say redemptive.